The Long-Term Democratic Strategy
Both small-d and capital-D
Since we learned the election outcome two weeks ago, there have been plenty of criticisms of the Harris-Walz campaign, the DNC, the media, President Biden, and various campaign surrogates. As they say, in a close contest (which this was) everything matters. One more rally, one less email, a different ad campaign in Georgia — the list is endless.
Bernie Sanders and Thomas Frank said it was because Democrats lost their advocacy for the working class, opting to reach out to disaffected anti-Trump Republicans. Seth Moulton and Nicholas Kristoff said it was because the Democrats were tools of “the woke” fringe because they didn’t denounce the (very rare) cases of trans girls playing on sports teams or because of the use of the term “LatinX”.1
What ties both of these arguments together is the reality that people weren’t motivated to vote for Harris/Walz because of their concerns about the economy. It’s not that woke talk or reaching out to Republicans was bad in and of itself. It was that the voters knew their personal economics had taken a hit2. Eduardo Porter closed a recent Washington Post piece like this:
The challenge for the standard-bearers of capitalist liberal democracy is not to offer a better strategy against the vagaries of the economic cycle. It is to bring aboard the many citizens who reject where liberal market democracy has brought them. The challenge is urgent, because the other side is offering to end liberal democracy altogether.
In his analysis of why the youth vote wasn’t as robust as expected, John Della Volpe writes:
But more than money, this requires a cultural shift in how politics itself is approached. It means moving from a model of periodic outreach to one of continuous dialogue. From top-down messaging to bottom-up leadership. From transactional politics to transformational relationships.
Success will be measured in restored trust and electoral victories. Not just in policy achievements but in community empowerment. Not just in voter turnout but in sustained civic engagement that extends far beyond election day.
The choice isn’t about moving left or right— it’s about moving closer to the real struggles people face every day. Millions of Americans haven’t changed their values—they’ve lost faith that Democratic party and our institutions can deliver on those values. By putting community voices at the center, delivering visible progress, and building lasting relationships, the Democratic Party can demonstrate that abandonment isn’t inevitable—that democracy can still work for everyone, not just during elections, but every day.
Last weekend, Dan Pfeiffer raised a similar concern:
Most voters believe that the government, the media, big business, experts, politics and politicians have failed to address their needs. They believe that their democracy has neglected them.
These trends are not new. They have been gaining steam in America for decades. This is not a surprise. Democrats need to get on the right side of public opinion. Now.
These insights bring us closer to the real challenge underlying our small-d democracy. And that challenge should be the central strand of capital-d Democrats going forward. This isn’t a simple strategy to flip the House in 2026 or the presidency in 2028. It’s more of a continual push in a consistent direction that a campaign tactic.
The problem is the breakdown of trust in American institutions. And Democrats are uniquely positioned for a long term strategic effort to address this problem. Here’s the nature of the challenge.
These figures are daunting. I want to zero in on the “very little” or orange bars. All but three institutional areas have more than one in five respondents saying they don’t trust those institutions. Two of those, small business and police, are local entities. Over four in ten have very little trust in the presidency, the criminal justice system, newspapers, big business, television news, or congress (at a whopping 57%).
Biden tried to paint Trump as a threat to democracy, giving many speeches to that effect. Pre-election polling showed protection of democracy as a salient issue for many voters. But they were split as to whether Trump or Harris was the threat to be worried about.
Republicans have attacked American institutions for decades. It didn’t start with Reagan’s Nine Scariest Words (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”) However, it’s been a rallying cry for my adult life. Institutions (of which government is one) do more harm than good, they argue, and are rife with “waste, fraud, and abuse”.3
When Republicans are in control, they don’t work to fix government problems (like immigration) because it works better for them politically to attack their inefficiency and point out that the public doesn’t trust government institutions. They promise to use “common sense” solutions that further weaken the effectiveness of our public institutions.
This is why restoring trust in institutions is a Democratic strategy. They believe in effective governance that meets people’s perceived needs. People want to know that the system is working for them and not just the well-connected or some favored group. That it can meet the moment to keep them safe.
Consider the federal response to the economic disruptions caused by Covid. People were hurting and saw that the institutions tried to address those needs through stimulus checks and the PPP supports for small businesses. Ironically, that infusion of cash was part of what contributed to the 2022 inflation surge when combined with supply chain issues.
I think a strategy to rebuild trust in institutions while require concrete examples like Covid relief to illustrate what these institutional areas really do. Congressional leaders and the executive branch should be expected to explain what their proposals will actually do, how long it will take, who will benefit, and the ways in which institutional improvements make a difference in everyday life. Media could do with a little less muckraking on institutional problems and provide a little more coverage to how institutions work well. Business and Labor leaders could be more transparent about what is behind their decisions.4
The “right track or wrong track” polling has been bad for decades. The most recent data showed 75% on the wrong track. But switching the party in power only manages a short-term fix to this measure. It doesn’t take long for it to return to its negative figure and then the public is ready to throw out the incumbents and switch to the other party for a while.
Underneath all of our hot-button issues — economic well-being, immigration, managing diversity, educational values, international relations, criminal justice — is a lack of trust that the systems that are supposed to address those issues are working. Fixing that perception is the key democratic initiative of our time. It won’t be easy and it won’t be quick. But we need a commitment to make this a top priority as we approach America’s 250th birthday.
As I wrote the other day, I am a political junkie and I cannot think of a single time I heard someone use “latinX” during the campaign.
Although, as Philip Bump observed yesterday, somehow the percentage of Republicans saying their situation was “much worse” than it was a year earlier dropped by 16% from October 23rd to November 19th!
Which leads Musk and Ramaswamy to believe they can cut a third of the federal budget.
Bird flu might require hens to be killed off, resulting supply shortages that cause egg prices to rise, but it would be nice to have heard from Krogers when they expected that supply problem to pass and prices to return to “normal”.